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Anti-TTIP protest in Brussels. Flickr/Friends of the Earth Europe. Some rights reserved.For
a decade, dozens of trade deals have been negotiated, signed and implemented
without garnering much public attention in Europe. So what is it about the
EU-US trade deal, currently being hammered out, that has caused such an outcry?

Environmental,
social and labour groups across Europe – Friends of the Earth Europe included –
are outraged and actively campaigning.

Traditionally,
trade deals have attempted to boost trade by liberalising markets, lowering or
removing taxes and tariffs. TTIP’s route to increased trade has a different
focus, with the intention to harmonise regulations between the EU and US. The
idea is that products allowed for sale under the rules of one bloc would now
have market access to the other bloc.

When you see that the regulations TTIP seeks
to harmonise impact food safety, chemical use, labour law and public service
rules, the rising public opposition ceases to surprise. Given the size of the
economies involved, and the breadth of issues in this trade deal, it would be
the biggest in history if agreed. This deal’s impact on our food and farming –
issues extremely personal and immediate to many people – would be immense.

The
intentions of the EU Commission and US trade negotiators are clear from
documents leaked and publicly available. Regulations are branded as barriers to
trade, and must therefore be circumvented or removed. It is our firm belief
that good regulation, democratically made, is necessary to ensure high
standards of food safety and the environmental sustainability of our farming
practices. It is not red tape, as some would like to paint it.

Farmers and environment lose out

If
TTIP is finalised, more products of industrial farming would be traded in both
directions across the Atlantic, according to a study conducted by the
European Parliament.
Agri-businesses and their lobbying organisations have been pushing hard for
this market access. But who else wins with an influx of factory-farmed chickens
and dairy products?

Not the environment, as intensive farming and food
production practices emit more greenhouse gases and carry greater risks of
local pollution. European farmers stand to lose out, too. The European Parliament’s study concludes that if the
EU lowers standards and increases trade of industrial dairy products and cheap
poultry meat, the income for the European farming sector would decrease by 0.5%.

And
the price for citizens? The EU and US have fundamentally different approaches
to the issue of food safety. For meat production, the US lacks federal
standards for food production at farm level. US federal legislation only begins
to apply once the animal enters the slaughter house, meaning no overarching
rules for veterinary drug use, no specific rules for use of antibiotics and no
animal welfare rules. This completely contradicts the EU's regulatory approach
of minimising the risks to environment and human health at every step of the
food production process, from field to fork

The
World Health Organization has cited widespread antibiotic use in livestock as a contributing factor to the
growing problem of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria – one of the most
significant global threats to public health. If TTIP goes ahead, these advances are
in danger of being undone by imports of US meat from animals treated with
antibiotics.

In
another example, the EU takes a more cautious approach for genetically modified
(GM) food, while the head of the US department of agriculture has identified
better market access for US-grown GM crops as a key objective of the
negotiations. EU rules and safety checks for GM crops, as well as the labelling
rules for GM food, have been declared ‘trade barriers’ by US trade
diplomats.

The EU Commission has no power to change any laws on GM crops directly
through a trade agreement, but this deal can change how the laws are applied. Key to enforcing our laws is whether
small amounts of GM crops that are not permitted in the EU are allowed to
contaminate either our foods or seeds.

This low level of contamination is key
to maintaining our right to decide, and a key “trade barrier” target of the
biotech industry and US trade negotiators. If these thresholds are changed – as an outcome of TTIP
– Europeans may end up eating GM crops that have not been tested or authorised
in the EU. So while our GM laws themselves will not be re-written, they could
be completely undermined.

Power grabs and falsehoods

TTIP
seems to be already having an impact on how food laws are discussed and changed
before it’s even finalised. EU Agriculture Commissioner Hogan
stated
that, in parallel with the TTIP talks, barriers between the EU and US on food
safety could be already removed. In contradiction of this, and the published
positions on the negotiations, EU Trade Commissioner Malmström said
last week
that controversial foods or those with large differences in standards in the EU
and US wouldn’t be touched. Both cannot be true.

But
it’s not just current protections for people and the environment that are at
risk if EU and US regulations are harmonised. Desperately needed future
improvements to regulation protecting our environment and public health could
be prevented from going forward if this trade deal is agreed.

So this body will filter all new food safety
rules, transferring power from national authorities to the new committee. This
transfer of power will mean that the initial decision will be in the hand of
trade officials and not with food safety officials at national level. Our worry is that these
trade experts will see the introduction of new food safety rules as barriers to
trade, rather than the reflection of the needs and demands of society.

The
thought of farming practices and food quality being interfered with is
understandably unpalatable. As awareness has grown of the risks from TTIP to
essential protections for our environment and public, so too has opposition
grown. Our farming and food production system needs drastic improvement, but
this Trojan horse of a trade deal would lock us into a regulatory race to the
bottom.

For the sake of our food and its impact on our environment, TTIP needs
to be stopped.